Published: 9 June 2020

CORONAVIRUS UPDATE – MRO performance against SLAs

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, MedCo recently announced temporary measures including removing the ban on remote examinations and deferral of face to face examinations. Further detail in relation to this can be found in the News and Updates section of the MedCo website.

Introducing these measures may impact MROs performance against existing SLAs. In view of this, MedCo has agreed that when reviewing performance against SLAs in future audits it will take into consideration the current pandemic and the temporary measures put in place by MedCo.

During future audits, if a MRO attributes a failure to meet the SLA to the pandemic they will be asked to provide data to support this assertion, as is required for existing exclusions specified in the notes to SLAs in the QC Guidance document.

Where a MRO is adequately recording and monitoring its performance against the SLAs, as required by the existing Guidance to MROs, it should be able to provide the audit team with data and supporting evidence to demonstrate and quantify the impact of COVID-19 on their performance.

Whilst it is possible that performance against some of the Efficiency and Customer Service SLAs will be impacted, MedCo do not expect the temporary measures to impact the Quality, Data Security and Compliance SLAs.